Literacy Look-Fors

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About the Book

With all of the reform models, research-based programs, leadership training, and professional development focused on reading and writing, we certainly know more about literacy today than we ever have before. So why are schools still suffering with low literacy levels? The answer lies in ineffective and unbalanced literacy instruction.

As literacy is at the center of educational achievement, administrators and literacy leaders are tasked with ensuring that teachers are balancing the needs of individual students, the literacy content, and their instructional approaches to provide students with the best possible chance of attaining literacy standards that are at grade level or higher. Literacy Look-Fors: An Observation Protocol to Guide K 6 Classroom Walkthroughs is a practical, research-based resource that addresses two of the biggest challenges facing elementary school literacy leaders today:

1.How can I acquire the knowledge I need to become an effective literacy leader?

2.How can I become more purposeful and focused in conducting classroom walkthroughs?

This book lays out the look-fors that are critical to effective literacy instruction. But understanding and recognizing the look-fors is not quite enough, especially when trying to reach the bottom 20 percent of students. Therefore, Literacy Look-Fors also walks the reader through the implementation process of those look-fors to give literacy leaders the power to bring all students to grade level, or well above, when it comes to literacy attainment.

The literacy look-fors observation protocol is a formative whole-school instructional capacity assessment containing sixty-five research-based indicators. It is designed to guide your classroom walkthroughs during the literacy block. It will also enable you to assess the extent to which professional development and literacy coaching initiatives in your school and district are making an impact on instruction, and will suggest what types of embedded professional development programs may be needed for individuals, grade levels, or the entire faculty.

Through the unique seven-step process outlined in Literacy Look-Fors, administrators and literacy leaders will gain a solid understanding of how to assess and build instructional capacity, overcome roadblocks, develop targeted and embedded professional growth opportunities, and create a balanced literacy program to raise literacy levels.